Finally admitting after 9 years that their do-sweet-bugger-all policy on suicide isn’t working, this despicable trick has been launched by National…
Suicide reduction goal dropped over fear of Govt accountability
A goal of reducing New Zealand’s total suicide rate by 20 per cent over 10 years was rejected over fears the Government would be held accountable if the rate didn’t drop.
The target would have seen New Zealand aiming for 12 fewer people to die from suicide per year, each year until 2027. An expert panel created to advise the Ministry of Health concluded that target should be the main purpose of the ministry’s new suicide prevention strategy.
But Health Minister Dr Jonathan Coleman’s office pushed instead for vague phrasing, like “reduce rates of suicide”, that wouldn’t become an “accountability measure” for the Government.
…that’s right, just like the sick illusion of a budget surplus gained by underfunding the social infrastructure of NZ, just like how our real suicide rates could be 3 times higher than officials acknowledge, just like how National manipulate social housing data, just like how National manipulate Charter School experiments, just like how National manipulate reoffending rates, just like how National lowered water quality standards to pretend like they’ve done something for water quality – we are now dropping suicide prevention targets so that the Government can’t be held accountable.
On almost every single social issue, the first thing National do after cutting budgets to create fake surplus is to dilute, weaken, water down or utterly ignore any measurement of how much worse off the vulnerable are based on the cut backs.
This allows a political denial to set in because we have no idea of the number impacted.
It’s far easier to ignore the 41 000 homeless, 10 000 in prison, 500 suicides, 305 000 kids in poverty, 550 000 suffering hardship and 1600 dying each year from freezing houses when you don’t know the numbers.
This deceitful Government must go.
500 suicides,
if those numbers were sent to all leading papers n the world the immigration would cease tomorrow.
I cannot believe what this government is doing besides committing suicide themselves now; perhaps they know what is coming down the track!!!!
Is it possibly that it is a financial crash?
The RNZ business daily today are warning the stock market prices are dangerously over valued and due for a correction!!!!!!
The National party .
Defenders of the New Zealand Institute and their London based Mont Pelerin Society neo liberal ideology.
And this is the end result of it all New Zealand.
Lies.
My opinion of this Government is such that on reading the headline I was expecting them to redefine what constitutes “suicide”, e.g. labeling some suicides as a “natural cause of death due to mental illness” or some such nonsense. Hopefully I’m not giving them any ideas…
Lets be fair. Dr Coleman is THE perfect Key era, National Party minister. Utterly full of shit and utterly untrustworthy. He also tops it off by being a useless MP.
He will be remembered as being a medical practitioner that was against the Skypath because it meant the riffraff would invade his, yes, his Northcote Point. Fuck exercise, said Mr Health Minister.
But mostly what this turkey will be remembered for was his farcical cameo role as a pretend National Party wannabe leader candidate in the fake leadership race of the century, the competition that never was.
For a party that has plumbs new depths for dishonesty on a monthly basis, that was an epic of willful if not amateur illusion!
What I don’t understand is why the connections aren’t being made by policy makers about the high rate of youth suicide, poverty, the high cost of tertiary education, youth unemployment rates and the high rate of youth homelessness (nearly 50%). It’s hard enough being a young person but in this current environment – it’s a struggle. I noticed today that the opportunity party have come out with a youth allowance of $200 for 18-23 years – that would make a difference in the lives of many.
An old saying goes that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. National engages in all three most of the time.
National’s Department of Statistics now sounds a lot like the government department in George Orwell’s book 1984 called the Ministry of Truth, a government department specialising in telling everyone how their standards of living are improving whilst reality is the opposite.
Mike the Leftie,
Don’t forget they will be spouting National for a brighter future!!!!
This is all SS Joyce and his propaganda industrial agency MBIE doing.
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